Schools need to ensure that athletes also get a good education

There is no doubt about the talent in Jamaica as it relates to track and field. Champs is a perfect display of the greatness within our youth and this is seen across the globe, attracting athletes from other parts of the world. We hope that with all the investments into these themes, it is also being spread to cover their educational needs.

Questions after Champs

6 Apr 2023

THERE WERE the usual things to marvel at, and celebrate, from last week’s annual athletics championships for Jamaican high schools.

There is probably no other place in the world where junior athletes, as happens year after year at Champs, for two or more consecutive days attract crowds upwards of 30,000. Or where old school ties bind so tightly that decades on former students buy expensive tickets, don school colours, climb high into stands and endure the cacophony of teenagers to support their high school alma mater.

Loyalty may be blind, but in this case it isn’t without real value, as in the high quality of the entertainment or in the lessons available from the event. There are the questions to be asked, too, about Champs.

Champs isn’t only a great spectacle, but reconfirmation that Jamaica’s position as a global power in track athletics isn’t by fluke and that the prospects for the future remain good. I ndeed, among many fine performances last week, two stood out and are likely to have commanded international notice.

Since the retirement of the great Usain Bolt, Jamaica’s sprinting prowess has been largely maintained by its female runners. However, the advancement of 22-year-old Oblique Seville, currently ranked sixth in the world in the 100 metres and placed fourth in the event at last year’s World Athletics Championships, deepened confidence in a new generation of sprinters to succeed Bolt.

And now, there is also 19-year-old Bouwahjgie Nkrumie. At Champs he ran 9.9 seconds to win the 100 metres. In doing so, he not only broke his own national junior record, but became the first high school boy to run a sub-10 seconds over the distance.

Then, Alana Reid, 17, joined the pantheon of emerging female sprinters, setting a new national junior record for the 100 metres of 10.92, beating the 10.95 seconds of another emerging star, Tina Clayton.

This excellence in Jamaican athletics, whether on the global stage, or at Champs, doesn’t just happen. Of course, Jamaica’s historic athletics pedigree and the example of events like Champs help. Except for breaks during periods of extraordinary happenings, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the boys’version of the competition has been held consistently for more than 100 years.

The games brings together more than 1,500 student athletes, participating in scores of events, involving several rounds over four age groups. That is a complex logistical exercise, executed almost seamlessly, mostly with volunteer staff. The efficiency of Champs, some cynics are wont to argue, is a case for keeping government bureaucrats out of anything that requires organisational efficiency.

RECRUITMENT EXTENDED

But Champs ought to be a case study of what is possible in Jamaica, including positioning the island as a logistical hub for the Americas.

While Champs is the pinnacle of school athletics, much happens before the student athletes reach the National Stadium. Indeed, the quality of Jamaica’s athletics is obvious even before high school.

The island’s school system has the benefit of naturally gifted coaches, some of whom were trained abroad and have themselves competed at the high levels. And there are the scores of professionals who, for over four decades, have been trained at the GC Foster College of Physical Education and Sports. The outcomes of their efforts show in athletes at all levels of the school system.

It helps, too, that at several schools, alumni pump much money into sports programmes, especially track athletics and football. Obviously, the schools with the richer past students tend to get more. They can afford better facilities and enhanced training regimes, including nutritional support, for their athletes.

For decades, schools with strong sports programmes have been known to attract student athletes from other schools. In recent years, this recruitment has extended beyond Jamaica, to the benefit of the schools hoping to grab talent and students whose parents believe that Jamaica is a good place to develop their children’s athletic abilities.

By some estimates, up to 100 foreign student athletes are enrolled in Jamaica’s high schools. Many performed at Champs.

While most are from Caribbean community (CARICOM) countries, thus helping to give tangible expression to the regional integration movement, some are from as far away as east Africa, including Kenya. That, on the face of it, is a welcome suggestion of cooperation between the countries and people of the global south.

These athletes, however, are mostly middle distance runners, for which east Africans are known, lending to a perception that their recruitment is primarily to help secure athletic glory for their schools by winning Champs, rather than to afford them a rounded educational experience. Already, there is a perception that some high schools that excel at athletics and other sports lag badly in the academic side of their offerings.

This newspaper is happy that other countries want to take advantage of what Jamaica might afford student athletes, which is a potential economic resource to be exploited.

That, however, shouldn’t be at the expense of what ought to be the primary purpose of school, to provide a rounded education, which includes the students being academically proficient. This demands sharp oversight from the people whose job it is to ensure this balance.

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